I OUTLOOK I HEBREW NATIONAL BRINGS NEWYORK YOUR WAY Living With AIDS Activist David Green is trying to make the Jewish community aware of their responsibility to persons with AIDS. JAMES D. BESSER Washington Correspondent 0 Pastrami, Turkey Breast, Salami, Bologna, Corned Beef AND OUR WORLD-FAMOUS DELI FRANKS • Hebrew National delicatessen is made of 100% fresh, kosher beef with no frozen meat, no meat byproducts, no non-meat fillers, and no artificial flavors or colors. "Traditional New York Delicatessen" YOU'LL FIND A COMPLETE LINE OF - HEBREW NATIONAL DELICATESSEN AT: EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTOR NINO SALVAGGIO STRAWBERRY HILL Lefkofsky & Company 8634 Fenkell Ave. Detroit, MI 48238 Tel: (313) 864-4455 32906 Middlebelt Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48018 Tel: (313) 855-5570 1 Interior Concepts II A COMPLETE DESIGN STUDIO n % . savvree ,ncIrs . 0 Batiste Sheer Draperies ,,vaxiable XII' Gre 60% OFF y 8,0%; • W°11 All Vertical Blinds 29211 SOUTHFIELD ROAD • SOUTHFIELD • 552-9507 In the Southfield Commons Shopping Plaza 92 FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 1989 Oriental Rugs Today's Pleasure Tomorrow's Treasure I 251 Merrill Birmingham (313) 644-7311 2915 Breton Grand Rapids (1-800-622-RUGS) '11111•1•6 n one hand, the last thing David Green wants is a story about his life, or what's left of it. Green craves compassion and understanding, not notoriety; what he tends to get, when he doesn't get outright rejection, is pity and fear. To a remarkable extent, he rejects the notion of being a victim. Despite his anguish at the way his own community has blinded itself to his pain, Green speaks without bit- terness or rancor. He has come to terms with his condi- tion; he clearly feels uncom- fortable with the idea of tur- ning his sickness into a public issue. On the other hand, David Green has become an activist. In speeches at synagogues and rabbinical meetings, he reminds audiences that Jews have a special obligation to care for the sick and the dy- ing. And it doesn't matter that the objects of this corn- passion may be people whose lifestyles some Jews deplore. David Green has Acquired Immune Deficiency Syn- drome (AIDS). His story is a tale of survival against the odds. Diagnosed in 1986, he is among the elite few who have survived active AIDS for more than a year or two. More importantly, his spirit has survived an affliction that has become the modern equivalent of the Black Death, with all the terrifying social connotations of that disease. "David is no Pollyanna," said Rabbi Joseph Levine, the Jewish chaplain at the Na- tional Institutes of Health in Rockville. Levine has worked with more than 40 AIDS pa- tients; when he talks about his experiences, his voice breaks with emotion. "He has lived through several stages of hell. But he's a gentle, sweet, well-integrated person; he hasn't gone looking for a scapegoat for his disease. If you can picture AIDS as a manhole that people fall in to, he fell into it, he climbed out, and he's going about his life. Some people fall into it and don't come out." David Green's odyssey began in earnest three years ago. But even before that, AIDS had clawed its way in- to his consciousness. "I was like most people," he says now, laughing quietly at his own naivete. "I didn't think it applied to me. It was something that happened to other people. Although I felt badly for them, part of the denial process was to say `they did something I didn't do.' It's funny, how the mind works." His diagnosis was a long, agonizing process. "It took a long time," he says now, "They had to do major lung surgery to make the diagnosis. But I think the doc- tors always knew. They took 'We're providing millions of dollars for Jews in the Soviet Union who we've never seen — but we have a problem with people right here who are suffering with AIDS. a long time to tell me; I think they didn't want to scare me." When the diagnosis came, it was a staggering blow. "I was already a basket case," he says. "It was difficult for me to understand; it must have been doubly painful for my family, to have this realiza- tion sink in. And we knew that everything was ahead of us." Green's feelings of isolation were intensified because he did not know anybody else with AIDS. "So it was very lonely, very scary; I didn't have anyone else to tell me what it was like, what would happen. It was a real journey — and that was just the begin- ning." One of his first reactions was to ask his doctors the ob- vious question. "Back then, silly me, I asked my doctors how long I had left. Both of them said no more than two years. Of course, that didn't take into account that in those two years, AZT could come out, a variety of new treatments could be developed. I saw one of those doctors in Macy's recently, and boy, did that feel good. There I was, and he asked me how I was, and I said 'I'm